I just bought a new system so I’m recycling my old one. Would a LinuxMCE give me pretty good media type compatibility for all these old video files I have of mixed formats? (avi, xvid, wmv, some mkv, some dvd-rip, some iso, etc)
No experience with Linux MCE but I’m running Linux Mint and it can do all those with the codecs already built-in.
LinuxMCE uses ffmpeg as its backend, so it should play pretty much everything. But the UI really, really sucks. I strongly suggest installing ubuntu gutsy 32bit and using XBMC.
Hrm … okay. I’ll check out Mint, I’ve already been browsing XBMC but it’s still pretty involved in setup for the Linux port. Still it has a damn nice UI from the XBMC team already. I also have a coworker telling me to check out Mythbuntu.
I have about a week to try them all out and make a decision. Thanks for the tips guys.
Myth sucks rocks for watching recorded videos. It’s a workable alternative to tivo/your cable company DVR for recording TV, however.
Mint I never heard of before, but from the webpage appears to be an ubuntu fork with additional video codecs. Don’t see why you wouldn’t just use ubuntu.
XBMC isn’t hard to configure if you’re comfortable with linux.
Which I am. My only issue is if any of the functionality is “beta” like or if it’s indeed pretty stable. Technically I could hack codecs into a vista MCE if needed, but the free choice would definitely win out if it plays without crapping out on anything often.
The functionality is great, but it’s still very much prerelease software under steady development. There are some features that when enabled will make it freeze up and some of the menus aren’t changed for linux yet. For example, it still has “xbox saves” listed under programs. That said, it’s much better than any of the alternatives. I just SMB mount the bittorrent directory on my windows box and play videos. Everything plays, and it just works.
Any HD issues? I know on the actual xbox there were, I don’t see why there would be on the linux port with decent hardware though?
XBMC/Linux works perfectly fine with HD content as long as your CPU has enough horsepower to decode it. On stusser’s recommendation I’ve been using it lately (again, used to run it on my Xbox 1 before lack of HD support moved me to Vista MCE for a while) and it is awesome. The software is less beta-ish than you might be thinking. As long as you can follow instructions (see stusser’s link in the other XBMC thread in this forum), you should have no problem getting it compiled and running. The only issues I ran into when installing it that were kind of a PITA is in 5.1 sound support, but the problem was as much of a general Linux support issue as it was an XBMC specific one… and it only took an hour or two to get it all sorted out and only occured because my boxes have fairly newish/non-Creative PCI
audio card hardware.
Yep, works fine with HD. I run it on an E4500 overclocked to 3Ghz and can play 1080p h.264 MKV files with 0 dropped frames. Works like a dream.
That gives me hope. This is on an AMD FX-60 so that would match up not to far from your spec’s stusser. I’ll check out your other thread as well on the setup. It’ll be nice being able to play straight from my shares.
That’s plenty fast. At this point with the new CABAC patch a 2.4Ghz C2D can play 1080p at reasonable bitrates without dropping frames. XBMC rocks.